


Ask The Unhappiest Man In The Room

by Bawgdan



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Death, Eventual Romance, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Slow Burn, Slow Romance, Trauma
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2021-01-07
Packaged: 2021-01-15 08:31:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 15
Words: 16,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21250457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bawgdan/pseuds/Bawgdan
Summary: We all know that at some point we are going to die, but most of us don't get to choose how. That being said, it comes as a surprise even if the signs are plainly written over our heads.Levi has to make a difficult trip back home to deal with the loose ends he never bothered tidying up. (AU)





	1. Nature Versus Nurture

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When Levi got the news, he was heading out of his downtown office. A menacing, slender building with tall windows, surrounded by bigger buildings covered with even taller windows. His cellphone began to vibrate in his pocket as he took the first step onto the elevator.

There was no thirteenth floor. The numbers skipped right to the fourteenth. The elevator chimed when the doors tapped shut.

Levi rarely answered his phone once he's off the clock. He doesn't answer for anyone. Friends aren't exempt from his much needed 'after hours' of doing fuck-all. Staring at all that paperwork, meticulously reading tiny-font documents, called for a solid eight hours of silent decompressing. 

Truthfully, and he wouldn't deny it, he had been terrible at maintaining his social life. All the time he could've been exercising productive emotional labor was absorbed by his company. Weekends that should've been reserved for dates were given to half-days on the golf course with the company president. Levi hates golf but had been surprisingly good at it (and he better be, having spent so much money on the clubs).

Performing politeness with his clients and secretary while maintaining excellence. It's a miracle he was able to find time to sleep. Hange's smiling face stretched across the screen. The LED light flashed like lightning. He grimaced a little, really grimaced like it hadn’t been months since their last conversation.

"Hello?" Levi rasped.

"Levi." Hange sounded different but it had been a very long season. She breathed like there was a lot of phlegm in her throat.

"Yes." Levi balanced his cell phone on his shoulder, rummaged through his bag for a his cigarettes. 

The elevator floated down, gliding from the seventh floor, to the sixth, fifth...

"Erwin is dead."

Levi was young when his mother died. He can't recall if anyone had bluntly told him so. If he were to rely on his memory, he only remembers knowing like God had whispered it into his ear while he slept.

And from then on it had been a planted truth he had to deal with, water, and nurture.

But his first response to _Erwin is dead_ was disbelief. _What a shitty joke, Hange_– he thought to himself. The second floor lit up and the elevator stopped. When the doors opened, no one was on the other side. 

Hange never joked about things like death.

It got so quiet in that spacious elevator, for that long moment, Levi sincerely believed _Erwin is dead_ had killed him. His heart stopped. Hange held on to that windless silence with him. 

Erwin had committed suicide. Levi didn't ask but Hange never spared details. Could never hold water, not even in a tiny teacup. Erwin had driven himself to a campsite two towns over from where they had grown up. He'd lit a small charcoal grill in the back seat of his car, rolled up the windows and sat there alone until he fell asleep to never get back up.

The car ride home, for Levi, was thirty minutes in traffic, white knuckling his steering wheel and choking on the new seed he'd swallowed. 

Erwin drove, approximately, thirty minutes, contemplating what he was going to do. Alone. By Himself.

The first thing Levi did when he slid the keys into the lock of his expensive apartment, he shrugged out of his blazer, immediately dug the golf clubs out the back of his coat closet (when the fuck has he ever needed a fucking coat closet). He snatched the heaviest club and stormed back out the door, standing in his tiny patch of lawn. 

He asked where had time gone? God did not answer him. He never had.

Levi proceeded to hammer his expensive golf club into the dirt. The impact shot up his arm and the hard vibrations made him numb to his elbows. Over and over again until he struck a depression into the earth.

Levi can't remember screaming or crying. He blacked out, but his throat felt sore and dry as though both occurred simultaneously.

When catastrophes happen, some time later, people always ask "where were you during such and such..."

Levi received the news leaving a job he'd grown to hate in some search for himself while _himself _had never gone anywhere. 

He has been right there the whole time. In one spot. 

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**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really have no clue what this is going to turn into. I had an idea and things in my life that I needed to process for myself. I'm not the smartest person, so all errors I missed, one day I might get around to fixing them. I try not to beat myself up about perfection because I'm writing for free.
> 
> Thank you for taking the time to read. Leave a comment if you like.


	2. Life On Mars

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_'Closed casket. This I can do.'_

Levi doesn't cry the entirety of the ceremony. Hange does, not as hard as he had expected her to. It's quite a precarious shituation, expecting people not to cry as though crying is ill-mannered. The whole thing is uncomfortable. He winces in pain during the eulogy, he could not and did not deserve to give.

_Believe it or not,_ he tells everyone in his head, _he was supposed to be Erwin's best man. He was Erwin's best friend after all. _**_Was_**_._

Hange is surprisingly good at showing support. She doesn't ask him a million damn questions nor share all the sordid thoughts that made her eyes wet. Sure, a terrible thought or two crossed Levi's mind once. Did Erwin cry before he made the decision? What was the last thing he said to no one? Did he say anything at all? Why at all in the first place?

Awfully normal thoughts people ask themselves when someone they love kills themselves with no explanation. Well, there is an explanation—something he and Hange will never know.

"Do you think...?" Hange begins on their way out to the funeral home's parking lot.

"What?" Levi finally speaks after hours of silence. Hange picked him up from the airport and nothing of substance had been said since the '_OMW'_ text message.

Hange folds the jacket of her pantsuit over her arm. She slides her glasses up the bridge of her nose. The sunlight causes a glare in the wide lenses.

"It's our fault?" Her shoulders sag, the wrinkles in her shirt stretch.

Levi hasn't given that aspect much thought. It didn't occur to him until then that it could be his fault—he makes up his mind that the death itself isn't his fault. What lead up to it? No. He doesn't want to think about it.

"No. We aren't murderers." Levi knows exactly where her head went.

Erwin and Hange had broken up months ago. Hange explained to Levi in a barrage of green text bubbles that she felt as though she'd been with him out of habit. They'd been together for so long that they stopped feeling like romantic parters and began to feel like roommates.

How they happened was an accident to begin with. In Levi's absence, behind his back. They had forged a life together while he was off in a big city chasing a meaningly position to the top. They kept him in the dark for a year before actually telling him that their one night stand had blossomed into romance. He wonders if Erwin's sadness had brought him to sleep with Hange.

"Miss Hange." One of Ewrin's students approaches them. Freckles spotting around his nose. He looks like a smart kid. She sucks up the snot in her nose, regaining composure. Levi turns away and watching the cars turn out of the parking lot and into the street.

"Marco." She rubs her nose with her fingers.

"If there's anything you need..." Marco and Hange become enraptured in their grief. Levi stops listening to their conversation. It's been a long time since he's been home. He has been avoiding the smell of this place. Freshly cut grass. He hasn't smelled it in a long time.

Levi doesn't want to feel grief. He doesn't want to feel anything.

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Petra's morning started at six, moving at a snail's pace into the lunch rush. She'd picked up a double shift, feeling obligated to do so. That's her problem—she does things to please people. At her own expense every single time. The day is good so far. She has yet to drop a hot plate. Syrup had somehow gotten on her wrist. It makes her fingers sticky. She leaves traces of herself on every plate or cup she hands out.

Petra ping pongs between her tables. Flipping them. Scooping crumbs into her cupped palm. Whipping a mildewy dish rag on the cracked leather seats. On to the next.

The next is Levi. She stops her rhythm. Glaring wide-eyed at the boy she used to love. He never knew she did. With his hair combed back. Unlike the the messy fall he used to wear after soccer practice. People look so differently when they're older but it's bizarre how in the right lighting, you can still find traces of their childhood. Hange is with him. They both look somberly at their menus.

Erwin is dead. _That's why_. Petra had seen in all over social media. It sent their entire town into frenzy. Everyone loved Erwin. Petra makes her way to their table.

_Erwin didn't love himself_. The thought pops in her head. Guilt for thinking it dashes at her confidence.

Rubber shoes sighing each step, she tries to come up with the right first thing to say. If she is to cheery, she'll come off thoughtless. If she is too somber, then she'll be reminding them that today was the funeral.

Will they wonder why she didn't go? She couldn't go. Her job wouldn't let her. Erwin was a mutual friend. Not a best friend nor a relative.

"What can I get you guys?" Petra springs it on them.

Hange peers up and over her glasses, doesn't smile, looks like she wants to but it's physically impossible. Levi lays his menu down flat on the table and looks directly at Hange.

"Coffee. Yea." Hange's usual. All sugar, no cream.

Petra glances at Levi. It has been such a long time. Their relationship was never solid. They always seemed to exist in close proximity. Her want for him more shallow than of substance. She used to think they'd be perfect together. Made up many scenarios about them. Petra spends more time fantasizing about _what could be_ instead of actually living.

"Levi?" Petra shouldn't be seeking validation, but she does so anyway. Wants it like flowers want rain.

Levi looks at her. The ghost of his soft adolescence melting away when he turns from the direct sunlight pouring onto the table.

"I don't want anything." He shrugs.

Normally, Petra would supply '_Are you sure_?'

But he is certain. He'd said it with clarity, like the thought had occurred to him instantaneously and would make sense for the rest of the day. There is no other answer but _'I don't wan't anything'_. What he wants can't be bought, she knows.

"Ok." Petra doesn't linger at the table for too long.

When she walks away, a tightness twists up her throat.

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He can't be there for Hange the way she needs him to be. She gave him the option to come back to her place or to head back to his hotel. She took it well when he decided to go back to his hotel room.

_'We all process pain differently.''_

He wished someone had asked him if he needed anything after the death of his friend. No one asked him anything the entire service.

"Are you mad that I left?" Levi asks Hange before he steps out of the car. She takes an unnaturally long time to answer, with her fingers enclosed around the stirring wheel. It's the neatest he's ever seen her. Her hair is pulled up in clean bun. No fly aways. She'd attempted to paint her chewed fingernails.

"I never blamed you. This place is a dump." Hange is really saying, this place made Erwin sad. We all should've left.

"I'll see you tomorrow." Levi waits for Hange to pull off, watches her car glide through a yellow light. 

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	3. I hate myself. Thanks for asking...

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The inevitable happens...

It baffles him that it took so long to make the decision.

Levi wrote his resignation letter and broke the lease on his apartment. The thousands of hours he put into building the kind of life you read about in the swanky architecture magazines, he destroyed his hard earned life in two week's time. His good furniture (a symptom of his neuroticism about being perfect), he left behind. It did not matter what his landlord did with any of his belongings. No more golf. No more emails. No conference calls and awkward social interactions with people he didn't like.

He moved back home.

"So what are you going to do here?" Hange is a nurse. She is needed everywhere. There's not much he can do in a small working class town with his prestige in Public Relations. He hasn't given much thought to it and he isn't opposed to doing something entirely different.

"Find a place to stay first." Levi stares at his suitcase full of the clothes he didn't decide to get rid of. A pair of jeans. Sweats. Socks. Two different color T-Shirts. The sane kind of articles of clothing people utilize in every day, normal, functioning life. He never wants to choke his neck with a tie ever again.

Hange nudges a beer in his hand. Her apartment smells like lavender. She hadn't touched any of Erwin's belongings. Erwin's silver wrist watch lingers inside of the candy bowl they use to dump their keys in.

"Why? You hated it here. It was like you were allergic to this place." She is happy to have him back. He could stay at her apartment for as long as he liked. Rent-free. She loves him that much.

"I started to hate everything there too." Levi has always been a dispassionate person but when it comes to things (people more specifically) he dislikes, they can eat up his spirit.

A long pause as he gulps at his 11 a.m. cold beer.

"That sounds like you. I don't think you have it in you to **_like_** anywhere. Are you capable of liking anything?" Hange hasn't been to work in a week.

Levi thinks really hard. He rests an elbow on the card table, massaging his jaw. The stubble on his chin itches.

"I like you." He says thoughtfully.

Hange begins to cry.

Life just goes on. And it is painful having to breathe, being forced by the higher power to experience the stimulus of the sun setting and the changing weather. Grief is an understatement. He is too numb to feel despair. Disbelief? Awe perhaps—amazed that he woke up in the morning, brushed his teeth, sat down at the table with Hange, without Erwin. Many years of 'without' are to come.

Erwin used to say, before doing something spontaneous that he was _'Here for a good time. Not a long time._'

Levi spends the rest of the morning thinking about all words Erwin had used, knowingly or unknowingly (he'd never know) that were anticipatory gestures.

The death of someone you love is like misplacing something important and never being able to find it. Yet even after accepting that it's lost forever, you still think about it and are hopeful that when you push a couch cushion out of the way or shake out a suit jacket, whatever you never found will fall out from it's hiding place. You never stop thinking about it. Not _knowing_ tortures you.

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Two months had gone by since the last time Petra saw Levi at her old job. As she zips up the back of her black sheath dress, Levi pops up in her head. She hasn't even thought about him since taking his receipt and shoving his ten dollar tip into her pocket. Petra stands there, bewildered, amused by how strange life is. You can go so many years without talking to someone and still think about them. Someone who is a none factor in your life. Her reflection in the mirror blinks back. The sunlight slopes around Petra's right arm, her peach fuzz hairs standing erect catching particles of dust.

Petra recovers from the thought and gets back to getting ready for her fourth job interview. It takes her ten minutes to find her cheap chunky earrings. The screen of her phone lights up. 'Do Not Answer' leaves a voicemail after his fifth text. Petra scoffs then slides her feet into her only pair of flats. The black suede looks crusted around the bow sitting in the middle of her toes.

She takes her phone first and shoves it into her canvas tote bag. Keys. Then a sweeping room check to be sure that she had unplugged the iron and turned off the stove. The grease in the frying pan will stink later. She takes one last sip of her orange juice before heading out the front door.

Her duplex has a curmudgeonly sort of charm. So far, she's been the only tenant for some months. The quiet is something she looks forward to at the end of the day. When people leave Trost, they don't come back and the people who don't stay put in their old family homes.

Petra notices the neighboring front door is open. She was hoping she wouldn't have neighbors...Quiet is her company. Aloneness is how she falls asleep.

Levi steps into the doorway twisting a knot into a garbage bag. Their eyes meet. Petra feels an immense pang of unwarranted embarrassment. 

"It's not cool to leave the front door all open." She sputters a bit.

"I got nothing worth stealing. Maybe too many pairs of socks." Levi replies dryly. His damp hair sticks up around his head. 

Awkward is an understatement. This is too specific, for Petra, to be a random sort of happening in one's life. Levi says nothing more, throwing the garbage bag out onto the porch and goes back inside, closing the door behind him with a soft click. He hasn't changed.

Well, what else is there to do for Petra other than to get on with her life? Heading to her car, she shoves a peppermint into her mouth.

_So how could that have gone differently?_ She thinks **at **her reflection in the rearview mirror.

It's like something she'd read in a shitty mass-market paperback romance. Childhood crush moves back home and accidentally becomes her neighbor. Did he notice how much wider her hips have gotten since their teens. Did he think she was prettier? Is she even fuckable after the fourth or seventh chapter?

Petra pulls out of the cracked up driveway that they share.

_Does any of it even matter in the first damn place?_ No. It doesn't. It never does.

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	4. Peace of Mind

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Petra is certain she didn't get the job. Her interview came down like a sixty story building after an explosion.

** _Tell me a little about yourself._ **

She froze and couldn't come up with anything but sad. Disappointing daughter. Community College drop out.

Petra sat in the parking lot of the office building, thinking of all the things you_ can't _put on your resume. Cried. Then got over it. Before pulling off, she called up Eld (Do Not Answer). At the very least she is good in bed. She's amazing when it comes to escapism.

The cherry scented lube overpowers the stink of beer she'd spilled on her floor. It's a plasticky smell that she can taste on her mouth every time she opens it to moan.

She's durable. Eld snaps his hips against her ass, hard enough to bruise her. She braces herself against the brass headboard of her bed. Somehow, Eld misinterprets it as Petra 'running away' from his hard thrusting. He grips her throat, in response she deepens the arch of her back—choking a little on the lack of air.

You can't put this kind of competency on a resume. She's adaptable. The lube, her sweat, their skin sticking and peeling against each other. It repulses her but she sighs out in benediction for her orgasm.

Eld chases her breathing down with his own orgasm. He cum inside of her ass. When he lets go of her throat, she drops her sweaty face into her pillow.

Durable. Adaptable. Capable when she puts her mind to it. Why couldn't she say any of _that_ in her interview?

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You never know what to say to people who are grieving. When two people grieve together, it's a stale silence. They don't expect anyone to say anything first, but the awkwardness of having gone so long without speaking at all is cumbersome.

"Are you sure about all this, Levi?" Hange pushes the cart down the aisle of canned goods.

"Am I sure about what?" He is thankful for the break in monotony.

"Just uprooting your life? Leaving your career behind?" She reaches for a can of chicken noodle-soup.

Levi isn't sure if it had been the best idea. He just knows that he didn't want to do it anymore. The sentiment has been building up over time. He shrugs, stuffing his hands in the pocket of his sweatshirt.

Hange leans over the basket, her glasses pushed up on her forehead. Waiting for him to answer.

"I think it is safe to not be sure about anything." He decides, for the rest of his life. They were both sure Erwin would live to be an old man

They keep down the rows of cans until they reach the end.

"I guess you're right. If you stop expecting, you won't be disappointed with the results." Hange turns down another aisle full of bread.

"Guess who lives next door to me." Levi purposefully changes the subject.

Hange makes a noise, scanning the shelves for her favorite brand of hot dog buns. Her hair is folded in the collar of her brown jacket.

"Petra." Levi says inexpressively.

"Oh. She had a nasty crush on you in high school, didn't she?" Hange hums an artificial laugh.

"Yea. I don't know why. I was a shit head." He moves aside as an old woman zooms around them with an overflowing cart.

"Mhm. I remember. A slut too." Hange looks at him over her shoulder, performs a polite smile.

"A slut with good grades. That's all that matters." Levi can't stand the perpetual cold all supermarkets have. He tugs his hood over his head, pulls at the drawstrings.

"Hm." She moves on down the aisle.

"I'm a reformed slut. You should know." Levi follows.

"That's funny. You go off to some fancy schmancy college in a big city and decide to not sleep with a bunch of women. Where there is a variety." Hange snorts.

"I'd only been with five girls in high school, Hange." He hisses.

"Yes. All in rotating intervals. Please don't sleep with your neighbor." She jokingly hisses back. "Petra is a good, wholesome girl."

"Fucking is the last thing on my mind. At the very bottom of my list of priorities." Levi doesn't know what comes next, but something will come. Eventually. Maybe.

"Yes, our goal today is to make sure your fridge is stocked with real food." She scoops her hair from beneath her collar, shaking it over her shoulders.

"Hange?"

"Yea."

"Is it like I never left?"

"No."

"Thank you for not lying to me."

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Petra sits on the toilet, allowing the semen to seep out of her. She holds her head in her hands. Sweating. Her heart races, she isn't sure why. She was fine this morning.

"What's wrong with you?" Eld stands in the doorway of her messy bathroom.

"I need a job. That's what's wrong with me." She replies in a mousy tone of voice.

"You'll get a job, Petra." He sits on floor, in front of her, in front of the toilet next to her tub. Fully clothed.

"Someones says 'Tell me about yourself' what do you say?" Petra looks him directly in the eyes.

Eld has always taken himself seriously. He isn't the best person to ask but he is readily available.

"I don't know? Not right now, I can't tell you. Fast learner? Exceptionally detail oriented? I love math?" Eld already has a career as a pharmacist. He is long past terrible interviews.

"Is that why you finally returned my calls? To make you feel better?" He is so blunt. This is why she doesn't return his calls.

"Is that a bad thing?" Petra purses her lips.

"I guess not." He doesn't smile.

"Thank you." She sighs.

"For what?"

"Making me feel better."

Eld stands up and kisses her sweaty forehead.

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Levi steps presses the lock button on his keys. His car beeps and headlights blink back at him. He carries all of his groceries.

"Levi?" Eld mounts the top of the porch.

Levi stops looping through his sad thoughts, glaring up at Eld.

"You're back?" He steps down from the porch.

"So it seems." _As fate would have it_. Levi regards him coldly, like he does with everyone.

Like most people, Eld isn't sure how to respond to Levi's direct taciturnity. He claps a hand down on Levi's shoulder, unsure what to say to a person in mourning. Eld wasn't at the funeral. Perhaps he doesn't like them. Levi doesn't like them either so can he blame him?

"I hope it's for good." Eld smiles.

"One can never be sure." Levi deadpans, walking away from the awkward interaction. He hadn't locked his front door, spitefully, welcoming something terrible to happen to him.

But the long street of duplexes and old houses stays unoccupied, save for early morning and evening rushes. There aren't any kids on the street either. So the chances of anyone suffocating him with a pillow in his sleep are slim to none. One can hope. One can dream.

He drops all of his bags on the flimsy card table, the emptiness of his new home echoing his footsteps and breathing.

Through the thin walls, he can hear the pipes singing to life as Petra starts a shower.

"I hope it's for good too." Levi grumbles to himself. Stability hasn't been a part of his life.

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**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Hello. Thank you for getting this far. Covid-19 has allowed me to have the free time to update and be the trash goblin of a fic writer that I am. Hell I even managed to post on my wattpad page (if you guys are interested my pen name there is Bawgdan). If you guys are into moody stuff. Moody is my speciality. I hope you guys liked this chapter. It is horrendous. Errors and typos I missed, I will get around to. My beta isn't into SNK, and I feel cruel forcing her to read about characters she is unfamiliar with. I edited the last chapter cos I said Levi didn't have a car, but he does and IDK why I typed that. I was probably high. Once again, thank you. Hope I didn't appall anyone with the random anal.


	5. The Problem Is You

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You spend a lot of your adolescence getting into things you have little business doing. Wearing a lot of clothes that don't match and sleeping with men in their twenties. Things that shape your personality but are also traumatic. Petra didn't have the reputation as a bad girl, but she got up to a lot things. Not drugs. Her grades were decent. The typical things teenage girls indulge themselves in. Hoping for romance to validate her budding womanhood. Crying about things that don't really matter.

It's really hard not to consider her past decisions. Even the small choices like deciding to not to show up for a midterm in college, just because she wanted to enjoy the silence of her bedroom, to read a book she'd been putting off. There was also that one time she ditched school for ice cream in the middle of the day.

Petra doesn't have any addictions. Her motive is always _why not_? Which has led her to this jobless predicament.

She sits on her porch in a plastic lawn chair, flipping through an old Vogue magazine, a cold glass bottle of coke between her legs. Her phone vibrates in the windowsill, she ignores it. There is much pleasure to be had in the sound of cars rolling over the potholes.

Levi steps out of his front door, with the hood of his jacket pulled up over his head. He fumbles with his lighter, clicking at it until it sparks a flame at the end of his cigarette. The fly of his pants hangs open and he doesn't have on shoes.

"Morning." Petra runs her fingers through her wet hair.

Levi looks at her, considering something to say but decides not to say anything at all. He acknowledges her with a perfunctory nod. She averts her eyes back to the magazine but watches him through her peripheral vision.

"You missed home?" Petra tries again after some time. The bottom of a car scrapes against the pavement after hitting a pothole.

"This place was never really home." Levi breathes out and the wind pushes the smoke back in his face.

"It's not the best place. I don't blame you." She stares the ridges of model's spine. It's an ad for an expensive bag. Vogue is full of things she thought she'd be able to afford. Unfortunately _why not_ isn't how you get the things you wan't. It has had the opposite effect. "You can't choose where you're born."

"Yea but you've got a say so in where you eventually end up. A lot of people choose to mope about the state of their lives without actually trying to change it." Levi replies dryly.

Petra closes her magazine then takes a sip of her coke. Levi hadn't changed his texture nor tone. Not one bit.

"You chose to come back to a place that doesn't feel like home." She reiterates.

Levi traces the fingernail of his thumb over his bottom lip. The taste of his sleep still sour and pervasive in his mouth. Her statement doesn't bother him. It is factual. He would like to be irritated by it though.

"My friend died." Levi looks directly at her.

Petra eyes are puffy. A part in her lips. No expression to interpret.

"My diagnosis is grief. I don't think there's much else to speculate. I'd actually appreciate if it you didn't speak to me." He ashes his cigarette in an empty flower pot. For the rest of his life, he would be ok with not having to communicate with the rest of the world. Levi is done talking and explaining himself.

Petra presses her lips together. She nods slowly, not breaking eye contact.

"Ok. Sorry." A wash of anxiety makes her skin feel cold. She turns away from him and reopens the magazine, pressing her tongue into her cheek.

Levi finishes his cigarette.

"You should zip up your pants. Don't wanna scare the old ladies with your penis." Petra turns the page.

He shuts his door with a hard _thwack_.

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	6. No and Yes

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Levi lies in bed scrolling through a news article. The lighting in the room dims as clouds pass over the sun. He clenches his teeth together when an ad flashes across his screen. _Please, share your cookies?_ The pop up blinks at the bottom.

Petra hasn't spoken to him but that doesn't mean she stopped finding ways to interrupt his solitude. She sings when she's in the shower almost every morning. The pipes rumble in the wall and the tile absorbs the careful lilt of her notes. Sometimes, while the radio plays, her voice easily dips and skips with little effort. One particular morning, she doesn't sound so great. She sounds like a suffering cat. Unfortunately, for Levi, no amount of vocal lessons or talent can make it any less insufferable.

Another way to become familiar with someone who doesn't speak to you is being informed on all the different sounds they make while having sex. Petra's moans penetrates his walls, worse than her singing. She is very polite for someone who likes seemingly violent sex.

_"Yes please..."_ and sometimes _"Not so fast, thank you. Fuck."_

_"Deeper, please,_" she says a great deal.

It is always with Eld (she always loudly argues with Eld too). When it is too much to stand, Levi gets up and takes a walk around the old neighborhood. The streets he remembers like the criss-crossing lines in the palms of his hands. Every which way she gasps 'please' haunting him down the dark street until it turns into a cove.

And always, _always_, **always** when he returns to the duplex, Eld's car is gone. A demonic silence is present afterwards, like she had gotten her soul fucked right out of her body and can do nothing but lie still behind her darkened windows.

Today, she plays her pop music on full blast. The walls pulsate.

_So let me take away your pain_

_Give me all of your emotions_

_Land it like a plane_

_On my back if you can't hold it_

_Life is but a dream that you manifested slowly_

He shoves his legs into a pair of black sweats. The old wooden floors shake the entire house as he storms to his front door. The dirty glasses in the sink rattle. He swings the door open and the bright sunlight burns his vision.

Levi knocks on her screen door with a determined fist. Petra turns down the music before turning the knob.

_Life is but a dream_

_Here we are inside of it_

_and you're inside of me_

He is ready, all that fire in his throat and hot in his nostrils. Petra stares at him through the screen door. Her eyes shiny and red with tears. A white crop top hangs off her right shoulder and she wears pink panties (strawberry printed).

"Can you_ please_ turn that shit down?" Levi shocks himself with the polite please.

"Sorry. I just got tired of hearing my own thoughts." The tip of her nose is red.

"That's dark." He has no business commenting on anyone's darkness, having the entirety of his life cloaked in one big shadow—but he is feeling polite despite her rudeness. Hange has always said that he is bad at expressing empathy.

"Tell me about it." Petra pauses for a hard moment, narrowing her eyes at Levi or the hot sun washing on their shared porch. He can't tell.

She takes a step back after they silently agree that there is nothing else to say, shutting the wooden door. The screen door shakes.

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**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm a simpleton, so forgive my errors. Thank you for reading. This was inspired by a friend using lyrics to her fave songs in her fics and I've never tried it cos I always feel corny but really all of life is corny so what am I ashamed of. I guess I'm just self conscious about the fluctuating spectrum that is my music taste. It's Moment by Victoria Monet. Pretty song. 10/10 would recommend.


	7. She Said He Said

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Petra couldn't make sense of her crush on Levi in high school. The entire graduating class had gone to kindergarten and grade school together. He'd just stopped being the quiet boy missing teeth. No one had ever commented on the ways she had transformed after their freshman year. One day, he took off his shirt on the school bus, sophomore year, and the hormones altered how she had been perceiving him. He sat next to her sometimes, saying nothing. She remembers how often he took off his shirt in the late summer afternoons. The bus was so humid it felt airless and they were all suffocating on the smell of sweat and metal. It was hot like they were being shuttled through a channel of hell.

His strong aversion towards human interaction strengthened her attraction to him. Levi didn't care what people thought of him. This made him popular among their peers.

"This is my stop." Petra was near the window. She rose from the sticky seat. Her backpack sagged over one shoulder.

Levi looked up at her, his brow slicked with sweat. His defined stomach fluttered as he tried to breathe in the harsh heat. He moved his legs and eyed her as she stepped over him. The tears in his jeans split over his knees. She was acutely aware of her dress getting caught in the movement, crawling up over her thighs. It was the beginning of body changing. Something had changed—she wanted someone to point it out. Before stepping off the bus, she looked back, hoping Levi had spotted where the change was beginning but he had slid himself in her spot with his face pressed against the glass window.

In the case of most small towns, Petra had only known Levi through close proximity, but that had been the first time they directly interacted with each other.

The second time cemented her want for his coldness.

It was during their history class—one of the few classes she had with no friends and the only class she shared with Levi. Their teacher divided them into pairs. Petra and Erwin were assigned together.

Erwin wasn't cool like Levi. He was a sophisticated loser. Hange, paired with Levi, also had an uncool reputation that she contributed to. Hange let her nail polish chip. She dressed like a boy and had her tongue pierced. The part in her hair was always uneven, so were the two fat plaits that pulled at her scalp. She dusted the crooked part with glitter but it looked like rainbow dandruff.

Petra had no reputation to speak of. To be disliked or greatly liked showed that everyone thought of you often. Having no one cultivate an opinion at all meant that Petra was invisible.

Levi was more like his best friends yet he was exempt from the social stigma of radically expressing one's true self.

"Who was worse, Nero or Caligula?" Hange spun around in her desk to Erwin. Levi kept his back to them.

Erwin had a good smile. He was friendly and handsome and very normal.

"Caligula no doubt." Erwin shrugged his broad shoulders. He had soft muscles but played no sports like Levi did.

"Nero kicked his pregnant wife to death." Levi ran his finger through his hair and looked to Hange. His hair around his eyes shielded his profile. Petra was an outsider observing their odd intimacy with each other. Hange touched Levi a lot but not in the ways Petra wanted to touch him. Erwin leaned over his desk and jabbed a finger in Levi's back to make a point. Hange didn't ask Erwin if he wanted a gummy worm, she just shoved three into his mouth mid-sentence.

Petra's friends didn't tuck lose strands of hair behind her ear. She'd never eaten anything out the palm of her friend's hand the way Levi and Erwin did with Hange.

They hadn't acknowledge Petra. It was only when Levi turned around in his seat to face her. They all leveled their eyes at Petra and for the first time she felt seen.

"Cutting off a man's dick and forcing to him to larp as your wife or fucking your sister—which is worse?" Levi's directness was erotic in ways that a teenager doesn't have the language for. Hange held up a blue and red gummy worm to Petra. She rubbed her knees together, shyly shrinking away from Levi's unblinking stare. He really wanted her opinion.

"We could all be wrong. Everyone who was there when it happened are long dead." Petra accepted the gummy worm. It was the juiciest gummy worm she had ever eaten in her life.

That moment in time, she felt like she was in an exclusive club. They nodded, pleased with her answer, from then on they included her in their roundabout conversation about the Roman Empire and all the dirty ancient sex that took place. Petra learned what a Pederast is.

"Why do you always look like that?" Levi asked Petra at the end of the period. _Always_ meant that she wasn't invisible. Levi had noticed her enough to form an opinion.

"Like what?" She didn't feel butterflies. The sap of her heart leaked into her gut, thickening in her lower abdomen.

"Constipated. You always looks like you gotta shit." Levi didn't smile.

"He means nervous." Erwin gave her shoulder a comforting squeeze.

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Petra finally lands a job at the gas station around the corner from the duplex. She could walk to work, though she won't. The rocks in the parking lot crunch when she pulls up to her parking space. Hange mounts the steps of the porch in blue scrubs. She looks so much different from high school. _How many transformations are you supposed to have in one lifetime?_

Petra gets out of her car and they exchange smiles.

"Levi mentioned you were his neighbor!" Hange cleans her glasses on her shirt.

"Small world, right?" She remembers the juicy gummy worm, wonders if Hange still makes Levi eat out of her hand.

"Isn't it funny how a lot of us are still here?" Hange settles her glasses back on her nose. Levi steps from behind his door and locks it. The conversation ends there. Petra watches Levi stride by them, down the steps. The lights on his car blink when he presses the unlock button. He slumps into the driver's seat.

"It's nice seeing you." Petra climbs the stairs. Her flip flops slap against the balls of her feet.

"I bet we are going to see more of each other." Hange waves over her shoulder, sounding very sure that that will be the case. Petra doesn't wave but she keeps smiling until Hange slips into the passenger's seat of Levi's car.

Petra walks inside of her house and Eld sends her text. He is happy that she has a new job and wants to come over after work. Petra leaves the message on read.

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**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Errors I will fix later. Trying to survive this essential worker life lol


	8. A Good Day

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"What's Petra like now?" Hange watches Levi do her dishes from her kitchen island. He can't stand watching things that need to be done pile up.

"The same as she was in high school." He picks the grimy residue of food out of the sink and dumps it in the trash.

"No one is the same as they was in high school, Levi." She spins sideways in the bar stool.

"I don't talk to her. How the fuck am I supposed to know?" Levi rinses out a plastic cup in dish soap. For such a nice place, Hange and Erwin love, _loved_, cheap plates. The glass they do have sitting in the cabinets are pocked with water marks.

"I mean you can learn a lot about a person when you share a wall with them. You don't need to talk to her." Hange has been interested in Petra since the last time they spoke on the porch. Petra is still petite and warmly inexpressive. She has always had this easy going face you wanted to share all your business with. At least, Hange has always thought so. Levi doesn't share his business with anybody. She has no idea what he has been up to other than working his youth away at a PR firm.

"She fucks a lot and has bad taste in music. That's my opinion." Levi hates people so she can't understand why he ever thought Public Relations would fulfill him.

"She _fucks_ a lot!?" Hange barks.

"Yes. Loudly. All the time. She's disgusting." Levi scrubs at a fork.

"With who?" She props her chin in her hand.

"You're so nosy."

"Who though?"

"What if she isn't fucking anyone at all and she just masturbates loudly? Maybe that's all it is, she is such a sweet girl after all—right?" He gets water all over his shirt.

"We can drop the conversation. Since you clearly don't like Petra anymore." Hange shakes her head. Levi makes everything in his life so difficult.

"I don't dislike her. I just don't know her." He never really did. They were just always around each other.

Levi turns off the water and starts to put Hange's dishes away, in an order that appeases him. The current system has no rhyme or reason as far as he can tell.

"Does Kenny know you're home?" Hange now stands at her fridge.

Levi doesn't mean to freeze up, but he does so ungracefully, almost dropping a cup. It's a valid question. The way she so casually refers to this place as home sort of hurts but it is the truth. Home is where you are born just as much as it is where you choose to live. Both truths coexist and grossly compliment each other.

"No. He doesn't. Not from me as far as I know." Levi doesn't look her in the face. Hange changes the subject again.

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Ymir talks to Petra about this girl named Historia. Really, what she wants, leaning over the counter near the register is for Petra to buy her a beer. But Petra nods along, chewing on the same piece of gum from the beginning of her shift, two hours ago. Pain swims around in her jaws.

"She's still a senior in high school. I think she's going to some big college after she graduates." Ymir's decimates her own excitement, having talked so long about feelings that Petra has grown out of. She likes Ymir, they waited tables together. Unfortunately, there's a huge gap between eighteen and twenty-six.

"Go off to college with her." Petra shrugs.

"You know I can't do that." Ymir didn't finish her junior nor senior year of high school.

"You actually can. You like her a lot, don't you? People change their lives for their soul mates all the time." Petra pops her tasteless gum.

"I didn't say she was my soul mate." Ymir turns her baseball cap around on her head, to shadow how red her cheeks become.

"She might be. You'll never know if you keep standing here, waiting for me to break the law for you." Petra narrows her eyes, twisting her mouth into a smirk. Ymir gives up after ten more minutes. She buys three bags of hot chips and tea that comes in a can.

On Ymir's way out, Levi walks in but he doesn't see Petra. She watches him head to the back of the store. He grabs himself a case of beer. As he walks down the aisle of candy, their eyes lock and she sucks in her jaws, swallowing her gum. Levi looks indifferent, as always. He drops the case of beer on the counter, the change in the register shakes and the rows of key chains and cheap junk rattle.

"I want one of those five dollar scratch offs." He keeps direct eye contact. Petra's nipples tingle.

"You must be feeling especially lucky." She tears a lottery scratch card off a roll.

"I don't believe in luck, but I think it would be hilarious if I won a thousand dollars." He tries to match the sound of her moaning and her indoor voice. _Two completely different people_.

"What would you do with a thousand dollars?" Petra assumes that he has made more than that and has so much more in his bank account. He pays for his beer and the lottery ticket. With one of the pennies she gives him, he starts scraping at the shiny paper. He never answers the question.

"It would be funny if you won that kinda money. I'm sure you don't need it." She loves his sharp nose.

"That kinda money? A thousand dollar isn't a lot of money. That's rent at some places." Levi's rent in the city was way past a thousand dollars. The money he could've saved had he not been chasing austerity, to get away from his old life of having nothing, he'd have much more money.

"I don't have a grand. Barely a hundo. So that's a lot of money to me." Petra knows a thousand dollars isn't a lot but at least she wouldn't have to worry about her phone bill and utilities.

Levi scratches all the orange ink off the card. He wins nothing but another free ticket. It's enticing but he doesn't allow his dick to get hard over it, so he slides the ticket to Petra.

"Maybe you'll win a thousand on the free one." Levi takes his beer and leaves.

Petra stares at the ticket. She could get fired if her manager found out. He'd be back in fifteen minutes. She looks at the camera peering down at her.

It isn't worth it. She tosses it in the bin by her feet.

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Petra gets off at ten. When she parks her car beside Levi's, she cranes her neck to see if the light is on in his front room. There are faint streaks of gold through the blinds. She hops out of her car, tossing her slip resistant shoes into the passenger seat. After a moment of psyching herself up, she grabs her purse and shuts the door. Petra skips up the porch in her socks, then knocks on Levi's door.

He opens the door, his face forever stuck in a state of dispassion.

"I didn't win anything." She tells him.

In that moment, she communicates without words that she does in fact, moan loudly on purpose. Neither of them blink.

"Ok," he says a moment later. Petra's uniform polo is too big. It billows around her waist where she has it tucked in her pants. Her purse is a faded denim. There's bleach spots in her black pants.

Levi has spent the majority of his adulthood hanging out with folks who don't look like Petra. Someone like her would offend his old work peers, but this version of herself mirrors aspects of his history he's been trying to rid himself of.

And that's really been the problem. Erwin might still be alive if Levi weren't so disgusted with his past.

"I just wanted you to know." Petra nods her head, turning on the balls of her feet.

"Maybe next time," he says out the door.

She looks over her shoulder as she fumbles in her purse for her keys and smiles.

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	9. Dear Beloved

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Petra has tried, very hard, to like Eld at least half as much as he likes her. Actually, it's quite possible that he loves her and has been in deep love with her since they were thirteen. She's at that age now when you start considering settling over following your heart.

_Am I a bad person? _The cruelty isn't lost on her. She has made good efforts to restrain herself from using him, but they are only good efforts. Not efficient efforts. Changing someone's name to DO NOT ANSWER is not the same as blocking them.

Not considering herself a very good person absolves her of any badness. Only terrible people are capable of confidently calling themselves decent.

The sex is phenomenal, but she hasn't been with many men who are enthusiastic about being in her presence. So, this could be a bias. Maybe it only feels so good because Eld actually listens when she tells him that he's hurting her. He's comfort food.

Petra can't stop sprawling her fingers against her thighs, admiring the cobalt blue of her nails. Eld paid for her manicure then took her out to a nice dinner. He'd paid her rent last month and now the emotional credit is nearing its maximum limit. The car ride back to her place, Eld's disappointment fogs the windows. It radiates off his body. Petra always insists that they go back to her house, to avoid being absolutely cancerous to him. Fucking in his bed would make her a criminal, invading his home with her noxious nonchalance towards life.

"Petra?" He slows at a red light. Petra curls her fingers into a fist. The acrylic tips stab the inside of her palms, a feeling she will have to get used to.

"What?" Petra sees how she is always misunderstood. When she means to assert herself, it never gets across as uncivil.

"What are we?" Eld simply asks. When the light turns green, he speeds off. They drift through the waves of orange street lights. Petra is looking at him through the darkness of his car. The leather seats still smell new. Strips of orange ripple across his face. She observes his stubble and pores and his nose and comes to the conclusion, after so long, that he isn't bad looking. He just isn't for her.

The problem is that Eld is too sweet to her.

"I don't think about it." Which is the truth. She doesn't think about 'them' at all.

She spares him the details. Eld doesn't further press the issue for the rest of the car ride.

When they make it back to the duplex, she gives him a blow job out of obligation. He kisses her sweaty temple afterwards and the issue of his sweetness makes her physically ill. Petra spits his semen out in the toilet.

"Why didn't you swallow this time?" He asks her with a nonplussed expression on his face. Half joking, half serious.

"I just didn't." She can't stand him, that's why she didn't swallow this time. _Is it normal to want someone to dislike you so that you feel regular?_ Petra wipes her wet mouth along the sleeve of her t-shirt.

"It feels like you've just rejected me." Eld sort of laughs. He watches her from the couch. On one side of it there's a pile of her dirty laundry.

"What if that's the point?" Petra replies tartly but she is, of course, misheard. It has to be the smallness of her voice that often misleads people.

He lingers around longer and continues to treat her like a person who needs special TLC. It is when he opens her fridge and drinks one of her colas that she reaches the breaking point. Her nails are very pretty. They glitter when they catch a perfect ray of light, but she is tired of him. He pops the can open and chugs it.

"I don't wanna do this anymore." Petra hates that she has the taste of his penis in her mouth. _Has his penis always been so salty?_

"What?" Eld heard her correctly the first time. It's simply that people don't take Petra seriously because she lacks the inflection of anger. A long silence happens. Eld holds the cola in his hand, his face twisting into shock, then mortification like he finally considers her to be the disgusting thing she's been all this time. Yes, this is the reaction she wants.

"I'm done." She shrugs.

"I paid your rent last month, Petra." His brows pinch together.

Petra holds her hands out in the air, waiting for it to magically matter, like they haven't had this unspoken agreement. Eld does a nice thing, Petra returns it with her company.

"Well, I just gave you head. So we are even." She stands a good few feet away from him.

"Are you out of your fucking mind?" His voice is the loudest it has ever been.

"No! I'm actually pretty fucking sane!" She gets louder.

Eld pours the cola down the sink and crushes the can.

"Has all of this just been transactional to you?" He really does care because he waits for an answer. He waits for an extremely long time.

"Are you mad because I don't want to fuck you anymore or because I don't have feelings for you?" She rests her hands on her bony hips.

Eld then starts to look like he's been struck by lightning. The color drains from his face. He drops the can on the floor, correcting his posture. In that moment, he sees the little monster behind her placid demeanor.

"You bitch about the state of your life but you're really the reason why it sucks so bad." He closes the gap between them. Getting so close she can smell the cola on his breath.

"That didn't hurt my feelings." She lowers her voice, now avoiding eye contact. He gives her another opportunity to salve over this as a misunderstanding, to tell him if he's done something offensive, but she doesn't pacify him. Petra turns her head completely away from him.

"I'm happy it didn't. The first step is acceptance." Eld gathers his keys and wallet. He doesn't sit down to put on his shoes, making a swift exit.

Petra feels no change in herself. Her heart continues to beat at its regular pace. She'd expected him to put up a fight about it. A fight might've changed her mind.

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Levi is leaning over the rail of the porch, smoking a cigarette when Eld storms out of Petra's door shoeless. The screen door squeaks to a shut. Eld is breathing heavily. He slouches into the plastic lawn chair to stuff his feet in his shoes.

"Rough night?" Levi can't help himself.

Eld hadn't even noticed he that isn't alone. He gapes back at Levi. The porch light between the doors flicks. Three fat moths orbit the flickering bulb. Eld can't tell if Levi is making small talk or patronizing him. No one can ever tell with Levi. The smoke expands and thickens around Levi's angular face. Eld stomps his right foot into his shoe, gets up without tying the laces.

"She will blow you if you pay her rent." Is all he says to Levi on his way to his car.

Levi ashes his cigarette over the rail, flecks of orange fizzling out before touching the grass.

"Really...?" He says to himself feeling a strange sense of vindication.

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	10. Beer before liquor, never been sicker

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There is a terminal silence. 

For days, Petra makes no sound. Levi wakes up early one morning. He waits for the sound of her music or running water. Nothing stirs on the other side of his wall, _their_ wall, until 2pm. He has observed her work schedule. She leaves the duplex at four and doesn’t come back until midnight.

That night, she stumbles home at three in the morning. Levi gets up in the middle of the night to pee. Petra gags loudly. The quiet shapes itself around their shared wall, emphasizing the impact of her bile splattering in the toilet bowl. She heaves up more. It sounds like she is a bucket being emptied.

He could go check on her. Petra doesn’t have much company. That indicates to him that she has no one. Erwin had no one (or so he believed).

This thought compels him to be a good person. The act, he thinks, will save him from judgement if there is a god. It's a matter of insurance that he ends up wherever Erwin has gone.

Levi knocks on her door. She drags herself to unlock it.

“You sound like you're dying,” he says dryly.

“I am dying.” Petra smells like liquor.

“Do you want company?” Levi thinks about the quality of her blow jobs.

“Sure.” She moves out of the doorway without a proper invitation.

Her apartment is a mess but not as messy as he imagined it would be. Her sink is full of dishes. They have a smell of rotten sweetness but overall her cheap body spray is pervasive. Bottles of colorful plastic containers sit on her coffee table. Vanilla Lace. Dark Midnight. Oranges and Candy.

This is an accidental mess. Not one born out of habitual sloppiness. Petra sits on her couch, pushing the laundry on the floor to make room for him. She props her feet on the coffee table. Her hair sticks up all over her head. Each strand knotted and held together by sweat. 

"What?" She rubs her sleeve against her nose when he doesn't sit down.

Levi loses sight of the _ why _. He really doesn't care if he gets into heaven or hell. There has never been a time where he's been religious. Kenny sure as fuck didn't teach him how to pray.

"You asked if I wanted company. Not if I needed it." Petra rakes her long blue nails through her scalp, breathing steadily. 

Levi realizes that this is just an impulse driven fluke. He needs to see that he isn't so fucked up, that he's been handling everything OK. Compared to Petra, in her dirty apartment, he's come along just fine. Even in the face of tragic death.

"You must like it—my guilt is loud and ugly and big and takes up space." Petra sort of spits when she talks.

"I can't exactly sleep with my neighbor spitting up her guts," he says woodenly. 

"You're shit at being comforting." Petra stands up. Her pile of laundry at her feet. She sort of sways in place, staring back at him. Levi doesn't say anything. Petra is about to reprimand him for being so terrible but she feels the vomit coming back up. Petra runs to the bathroom. The entire house shakes as her feet thunder against the hardwood floor.

Levi follows behind her with his hands buried in the pockets of his sweatpants. He leans in the doorway. Petra leans over the toilet, spitting up chunks of blue stuff. She dry heaves and he winces. 

"Fuck, I'm so hot." Petra groans loudly as she slides her sweatshirt over her sweaty head. Her breasts are small but her nice nipples make up for it. She hangs her head over the toilet one last time, spitting up a blue loogie. Her skin ghosts around the shape of her rib cage.

She takes a moment to collect what little of herself is lucid. Flushing the toilet then tucking her hair behind her ears. She glares at Levi, cat-like, very drunk.

"I've always wanted you to see me naked. Is that weird?" Petra slurs. Levi notices her nails are a bizarre and out of character detail compared to the rest of her features. They are too long, too flashy, for someone as plain she is.

"Eld said you'd give me a blow job if I paid your rent," Levi says impulsively. 

"You curious?" Petra's eyes and nose are runny.

"No. Maybe a little bit but...no." He has little to no inflection in his voice.

"You were really just worried about me huh? What a good person you are." She turns on the sink to brush her teeth. 

"I just don't think I could've lived here if you were actually dying and ended up dead." Levi can't emotionally afford to be haunted by another ghost. 

Petra picks up the tube of cinnamon flavored toothpaste, twisting the cap. She stares back at him with her large, watery eyes. Her lashes stick together. There was a time when she was incapable of looking him in the eyes, but she does so with blankness. 

"I want to die but I'm not suicidal. I don't want to actually kill myself. I can take care of my lonesome." She squirts the toothpaste on her toothbrush. Levi waits until after she brushes her teeth and tongue before leaving. 

"Well I'm glad you're ok," he says when she turns off the sink.

"I'm glad that you're glad." Petra is so tired and drunk that she forgets that she is topless.

He nods his head, believing this to be the exact expiration of his invitation. As he is leaving, Petra says from her bathroom, "You're a few years too late on that offer. I wanted your penis in my mouth when I was sixteen, but you didn't see me."

_ How does she expect him to react to that? _

"I only mentioned it because I thought you'd laugh," Levi sort of yells over his shoulder.

"I'm not laughing."

Levi swears to never take Hange's advice. He will never soften up again if softening himself will continuously put him in awkward situations.

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	11. Jupiter Or Mars

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Kenny lives in the same mobile home on the outskirts of Trost. The driveway is a long dirt path that is easy to miss if the garbage can isn't beside the mailbox. Tall trees hide the acres full of junk. Old car parts stick out of the weeds like rusty earth limbs.

The mailbox leans sideways. Erwin had run it over one drunk night in their senior year of high school. Hange had screamed and threw up in her lap. Kenny never fixed it upright. Kenny never asked what happened. He retrieved the mail the next day and made no comment.

Levi doesn't hate his uncle. He loves him like all abused children love their guardians, but he does not like his uncle. Rocks pop under Levi's luxury car as he coasts up the weedy path of dirt. It makes him nauseous as the gap closes between him and his old hole of a dwelling place. Kenny will have something to say about his nice car. It's not a secret, he makes it very clear, that he is disgusted by Levi's success and what it has turned his nephew into. 

Levi agrees. He had joined the ranks of the upper class and stood to lose everything. He was ok with losing his identity as trailer trash. That didn't mean Erwin had to go too. That's not what he meant when he put it out into the universe. 

_ The sacrifices we make to escape generational curses... _

Kenny is soaking himself in a kiddie pool. A pair of aviators on his nose, a cigarette sticks straight out of his mouth. His body is thin but too big for the plastic tub. Where his arms and legs depress, water leaks out. Grass sticks to his hairy wet legs.

Levi gets out of his car and stands over his uncle, blocking out the burst of sunlight reflecting in Kenny's shades. The girls Levi slept with in high school always asked why they could never come over to his house. Kenny doesn't have on any pants or underwear. His flaccid penis floats in the water. 

"Where have you been?" Kenny drawls. His skin is blotchy and red, armpit hair wiry and graying like his scalp. Kenny used to be a good looking man. What women call cruel beauty. 

"Away from you. Obviously." Levi spins his keyring on his index and middle finger.

"I was going to see how long you'd go without telling me you were home." Kenny ashes his cigarette in the mud.

Levi used to be good at countering his direct aggression. It was a second language. He hasn't had to use fighting words. A polite _fuck you _doesn't gel over well in the corporate world. Lots of **_Thank Yous_** and **_Could you please_** and **_I'm thankful for the opportunity to_**...

"Who told you?" Levi stares at his reflection in Kenny's shades. 

"I didn't need to be told. I knew you'd come back. Run all you want to, you're always going to be looking behind you, here—here is in your DNA." Kenny licks his lips before sucking on his cigarette. The ash glows orange. 

Kenny had told Levi that he had the authority to take him out of this world as easily as his mother had brought him into it. He kept emphasizing the blood they shared. That their blood is strong like the river that ran through the Grand Canyons. Levi was only twelve then.

"One way or 'nother. You were going to come home." Kenny breathes out a cloud of smoke.

Levi has never liked the idea of being tethered anywhere. He clenches his jaws.

"Go inside and get me a beer." Kenny lazily gestures at his wide open front door. 

Like he never left this place behind, Levi walks up the steps. A dragonfly follows him inside of the house. The same carpet under his shoes, that old smell of cigarette smoke. The floor groans when he walks into the kitchen. He grabs a beer out of the damn near empty fridge. Kenny still sustains himself on beer and dollar store ramen noodles. Levi helps himself to a beer as well.

When he walks back outside, mindfully closing the door behind him, he kicks a crate off the porch. Levi rolls it with his feet until it stops in front of the kiddie pool. He hands Kenny his beer, sits on the crate, and uses his keys to pop the cap. Kenny uses his teeth.

"How much is the note on that car?" Kenny tips his shades over his forehead. Levi smirks because he knew it was only a matter of time. 

"About eight hundred a month and some change..." He swills the beer around his mouth, between his teeth.

"Kid, you'd get better use out of giving it to me."

"So you can blow it on your addictions?" Levi stopped doing the math on the cartons of cigarettes and beers and weed and pills Kenny accumulated over the years. 

"Better to waste it on me. What do you tell yourself, that you're investing...?" Kenny is a smart man. You wouldn't know at a quick glance. It's like he has lived his life to spite his potential. Levi theorizes that Kenny hoped that if he did the exact opposite of what the curse had anticipated, he'd avoid it. You can't fail if you don't try at all. But it hit Kenny harder. Kenny sits in a crater sized hole of misfortune for it.

"Something like that. I need something to my name when I die so people know I existed." Levi doesn't care as much as he used to but it is all he can think to say regarding his obsession with success. 

"I don't think that's the case at all." Kenny licks his brown teeth. Levi waits for him to share his thoughts but it never comes.

The smell of grass and urine unfurls in the hot gust of wind. 

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Petra is taking out her trash when Levi pulls up in their driveway. She waits for him to step out of his car. The door never opens. He'd turned off the engine but continued to sit in the driver's seat, staring ahead at nothing. Petra walks up to the door. The window is rolled down. An unlit cigarette hangs from his mouth, eyebrows beaded with sweat. Levi doesn't turn his head to acknowledge her. He blinks slowly.

"Are you ok?" Petra folds her arms on the window. She can smell his sweat. He'd driven with the air off. The inside of the car is hotter than the outside air.

Her kindness twists a knot in his stomach. Any amount of time with Kenny sucks the life out of him. Levi's hands shake when he pulls the lighter from his pocket. The stress he hasn't been dealing with piques. He lights his cigarette then tosses the lighter on the passenger seat. It bounces onto the floor instead.

"Levi..."

"I'm great. Thanks for asking." He inhales. Petra waits another minute. Levi cuts her a glare. She takes two steps back then walks away.

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When they were in high school, Petra can't remember what year, but she and Levi shared first period. He would start his day with Twizzlers and Mountain Dew. She would watch his jaws work from the other side of the classroom. In first period they were assigned seats alphabetically by their last names. There's a good stance between A and R, and a lot of sleepy bodies were in the way of her ritual of watching him. 

In his car, he sort of looked like he did early in the morning at school. Not exhausted but done. Like the future ahead of him is hopeless in that moment, like the past means nothing.

Being a fail-daughter has made her less optimistic but Petra is still hopeful. It's how she survives. If she didn't have a little bit of hope, she'd been evicted months ago. At the end of her shift, she bought a bottle of Mountain Dew and Twizzlers. 

Petra checks her appearance in the rearview mirror of her car. The tiny buns she had pulled her hair into aren't as neat. Her lipgloss isn't shiny anymore. Her star shaped earrings made her earlobes itch all day. It suddenly hits her that Levi doesn't care. He'd watched her throw up blue tequila.

She forces herself out of her car and to his front door with the black plastic bag in her hand, then knocks. Levi answers while her fist floats in the air.

"You looked really pissed earlier so I got you snacks from my job." She spits out. When Levi looks at her directly, she gets the tingles and the butterflies like her crush never died. He stares at her a little longer. Petra opens the bag for the Mountain Dew.

"I remembered..." Her words fade into the abyss of her shame for remembering something he'd never shared with her. 

Levi accepts the drink. She also hands him the pack of Twizzlers. Not being the sucker for kindness, Levi is shocked by how much he needs it. Hange is always nice. It's like your mother always being nice. Petra has no reason to be nice to him.

"Do you want to come inside?" Levi thinks how awful and nasty her crush must've been. 

Petra's face turns pink. He can smell the bleach on her uniform from cleaning at her job. To immediately think of something generous to do for somebody after scrubbing toilets—at the very least he could offer her liquor for her troubles.

"Sure." Petra lowers her head.

"Take your shoes off first." 

"Right. Yes."

Petra takes off her slip resistant clogs. Levi untangles the bag from her fingers. He notices her obnoxious blue nails again. He spares her his bad opinion.

"You're very clean for a man." Petra's socks slide against the wooden floor. Levi's side of the duplex is barren. There's an empty bookshelf, a couch, a coffee table, and a desk with a laptop. He doesn't have a television.

"What kind of men have you been dealing with?" Levi takes a cup out of his cabinet and pours the Mountain Dew inside of it. 

"None like you." Petra is scared to sit on the white couch so she stands in space.

"Obviously. Do you want alcohol?" He stands by his fridge.

"I won't be much of good company if I start drinking." She is scared to spill anything.

Levi drinks the Mountain Dew from his cup. The tiny Hange voice tells him not to sleep with her. He grimaces. 

"Why won't you sit down?" He walks around the counter that separates the front from the kitchen.

"I just feel like I've been sweating all day. I smell like a bag of wet pennies and I don't want to smear it all over your couch." Petra rubs her arm. Her purse is still on her shoulders.

Levi walks up to her and drags the strap of her purse down her arm. He throws it on his couch. 

"You always got off the bus before me, so you don't know what kind of place I lived in for most of my life. As long as you don't pee on my couch I think it's fine." He isn't smiling. Petra laughs.

"I guess you're right." She watches him sink into his couch. He waits for her to join him.

"Why do I make you so nervous?" Levi balances the cup on his thigh. 

"You just have this way of saying things that nobody expects or wants to hear." She sits down a cushion away from him, folding her hands between her legs.

"But you like it. That's why you're here." Levi rests his head on the back of the cushion. Petra squirms. She does like it. 

"What's the worst thing I could say to you?" He closes his eyes.

"To get out. That I'm ugly."

"Do you think you're ugly?" He smirks enough to show his teeth.

"No. Do you think I'm ugly?" She has always loved his half smile.

Levi purposefully takes a while to answer. He sips from his cup. The sound of his swallow makes her squeeze her legs together.

"Nah. You're pretty OK." He actually thinks she's refreshing having choked on Chanel perfume for so long. The work smell on her skin and clothes, the bleach stains on her pants, reminds him of that part of himself he tried to get rid of by fucking women in power suits. This neglected part of himself killed Erwin. 

"I've always liked the way you look." Petra relaxes. She can handle _ pretty ok _. It's not the worst thing anyone has ever said to her.

"What do you like most about the way that I look?" Levi baits her. He likes her ribcage the most, after having the chance to see it. 

Petra licks her lips. The answer is everything but she knows she can't give up too much too soon. Levi is still a man with a man brain. She isn't stupid.

"Whenever it got hot on the bus, you'd take your shirt off. I think I love your muscles the most. I loved watching you take your clothes off on the soccer field." She wishes she remembered math problems the way she remembers his shoulder blades.

"I don't look like that anymore though." Levi sits up and is staring back at her. He finishes his Mountain Dew.

"I think traces of the old you are still there. I can see it in your arms." Petra reaches over and pinches his bicep.

"Weren't you a cheerleader?"

"Color guard. Sophomore year." Petra lingers her fingers on his arm. His skin is so smooth. She wonders if his penis feels just as silky. 

"Oh. I don't know where I got cheerleader from." Levi thinks the perfect part in her hair is cute. 

"It's my smile. I have the smile of a cheerleader." She realizes there isn't a gap between them anymore. She'd moved a great distance just to touch him. 

"I see it." Levi honestly believes it's her vulnerability and inherent sweetness. Petra doesn't strike him as someone with a plethora of problems. Maybe sometimes she thinks she is fat when she really isn't. Her mom might be a bit judgmental. Her father is disappointed that she isn't a boy. Normal girl problems. Ex-cheerleader problems.

"Do you want to see me naked?" He asks.

"May I please see you naked?" Petra murmurs, taking in a deep breath.

Levi stands up, starting with his sweatpants first. He still has that defined V-shape of his pelvis. His penis gradually hardens as he takes off his white shirt. 

"Do I still look the same?" Levi keeps his indifferent tone of voice.

Petra thinks he looks better. He doesn't really need her to say it. The truth is in her face. She wouldn't have believed it if someone told her that her failures in life would lead her here. All those college applications she never filled out. The jobs she did not take to escape Trost. After all this time, she has been rewarded for being complacent—patient? She is so glad she never fell in love with Eld.

"Can I touch you?" Petra's tongue soaks in her spit.

"Sure." Levi replies softly. 

Petra flattens a palm on his stomach. It's the most that she can do. She also gets up, her hand traveling up to his chest. They're so close to each other she can smell the Mountain Dew on his breath. 

"Are you trying to have sex with me?" Petra admires his throat.

"I don't know." Levi wants to rediscover his loss. This he does know for certain. Petra is the closest thing he has to who he was while Erwin was alive that he can physically get inside of. Petra remembers that version of him. 

"That's not a good enough answer. I'll ask again..." Petra is willing to take her skin off for him but he has to say it out loud. "Do you want your penis inside of me?"

"Yes, I would like to use you to feel better about myself in the morning." He doesn't stutter.

"Ok." Petra pulls her shirt over her head. It snags one of her earrings off.

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**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it has been a while. Typical life stuff. Thank you for reading. I'm very strange.


	12. Look at those cavemen go...

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Hange's grief is demanding in its affair with time. Not a year has gone by, but her state of being has deteriorated as though fifty years have happened to her body. After work, she crawls into bed with her shoes on. Her scrubs smell like her sweat and spit and all the germs that cling to her body at the hospital. She has turned into that person who only brushes her teeth once a day and forgets to wear deodorant in the morning after a shower.

** _Dolor. Doloris. Dolori. Dolorem. Dolor. Dolor. Dolores. Dolodrum. Doloribus. Dolores. Doloribus. Dolores. Dolores..._ **

Dolor in Latin means pain. She internally repeats the conjugations in her head, hoping it will ease her protracted anguish. If it hasn't been a year since Erwin's death, and it feels like fifty, she won't survive the end of it. 

Hange's phone vibrates. Horizontal, face down in her sheets, she drags her phone from the deep pockets of her scrub pants. She angles her head, with one eye open to peer at the messages. Her glasses lopsided and squished into her cheek.

Her nurse friends know she won't be attending any of their functions but they do the human thing and invite her anyway. Which makes Hange's anguish a lot smaller. After a while of scrolling the group chat for missed details in her friends’ lives, she ends up on Facebook.

She thought Erwin's death would make Facebook unbearable. To her complete satisfaction, Facebook keeps her tethered to the many realities that lack a morbid grayscale filter.** Fat cats. Babies sucking on lemons. The Earth being flat after all! **She smiles because her pain is insignificant compared to some moron who has religious dedication to the Earth being flat and the deep state lizard people. 

At some point she hits a plateau scrolling through her timeline. Facebook suggests an unsolicited memory. An old photo of Erwin she had posted however-long ago stares at her. He was thirteen and innocent-looking like all thirteen year olds. His smile is rather sophisticated. Erwin didn't have an awkward phase. God did what he had to do and got it right the first time.

Hange cries on impact. She sobs senselessly. Hysterical with bubbles of happiness in her stomach and rocks in her throat from sadness. 

She had decided that their genderless baby would be named Dolores. Erwin thought she was kidding. Hange has holes in her body from staples, piercing guns, needles, safety pins, and razors. She wasn't kidding. Hange meant it all. 

Hange taps out of the picture, aggressively. The pixels come together and someone vehemently exclaims that ** _The Frogs Are Gay NOW!_ **

Her crying turns into painful thunders of laughter. She calls Levi to tell him the breaking news: ** _Dolores is in her womb, and the round earthing liberals are turning the frogs gay..._ **

  
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**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello. I haven't updated anything in a solid month and I apologize. My job has literally been so stressful and demanding. It has made me ill physically, spiritually, and mentally on top of all that. I've been in a sinkhole of doom and gloom. If you guys happen to read my other fics, I'm working on those slowly as well. This could've been longer but I wanted to show that I'm still here and committed to the fic life. My personal life has just been in shambles. Thank you for reading.


	13. No, I don't feel the ground.

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"How would you like to be fucked?" Levi looks her in the eyes.

Petra has never been asked anything like this before. Her thigh muscles tense around his waist. His raw penis is already inside of her—that's typically about as far as her say-sos have gone post-virginity. 

"I would like to be fucked like you're never going to talk to me again." Like she's collateral damage. 

"I think I know what you mean." The right side of his mouth twitches into a lopsided smirk. 

"Not like a slut." Petra doesn't take kindly to the sobriquet 'whore'. Eld called her that once and she slapped him purposefully hard across the face mid-pump.

"Not like a slut but like a casualty?" Static levitates loose strands of his hair.

"Mmm. Yes." This was her fantasy as a teenager. To be one of the handful of girls special enough to be fucked by Levi. Raw especially. Petra could die with him inside of her, and if God or Satan (she's indifferent to the afterlife) were to ask if she felt as though she had lived her life to the fullest, she would be inclined to say yes. She is very full. The fullest she has ever been, literally and cosmically. Her death would be thick, hard, and wonderfully violent. 

"Spit in my mouth." Petra runs her fingers through his hair. Levi doesn't balk. He keeps the same face, which is even more erotic than the imaginary in-the-middle-of-fucking face she had drawn in her fantasy.

"Spit. In. Your. Mouth." Levi won't kiss her. This is ok. Kissing is too soon. That would mean that this is romantic. Petra isn't a romantic person. She doesn't want to be traumatized but she isn't quite comfortable with softness. 

"I didn't stutter." She brushes his left eyebrow with her thumb. 

After a moment or so, he purses his lips, his throat undulating. Petra opens her mouth. He blows a wet bubble. The froth scintillating in the dim lamp light. She catches the thinning string of saliva on the tip of her tongue. Levi coughs it up, she swallows it all. 

Levi finally understands what she means by not being fucked like a slut. Fucking her like a slut would be cold and dismissive. He is man enough to admit that he doesn't want to have detached sex either, since it has been some time since he's last had sex. Work had transformed him so that he can't recall what kind of sex he last had. It sure as hell wasn't spectacular if he can't remember. He can recall power points, marketing strategies, spreadsheets, and mission statements though. 

Petra lifts her hips, urging him to get on with it. She wants him to fuck her like he's sharing a dirty secret to an unbiased stranger. Who would've thought that he and Petra, all this time, have been speaking the same demented language? 

He lowers his face into her neck. She sprawls her fingers in his scalp, the other hand flat against the slope of his shoulder. He moves inside of her with loveless precision. Petra curls her toes into the sheets, her bones pop. Loveless and acute pleasure crawls from her abdomen into her throat—she punctuates his name with an ellipsis of shallow breathing. Levi licks her neck, leaving a trail of saliva that sticks their skin together.

They have deep, meaningful, escapist sex. They lose track of time. They don't kiss. They breathe all over each other. 

When he feels himself at the tip of his climax, he pulls out and his semen lands on the plane of flesh between her breasts. Petra uses a hand to rub out the rest of her orgasm. Being denied the ability to finish, a gross sound rockets from her throat. 

"Oops." Levi's face is red but his expression is fixed in a permanent state of indifference. He smears the semen puddles into her skin. Then he shoves his sticky index and middle finger into her mouth, rubbing the semen into her gums. It's better than kissing. ** _You don't ever have to kiss me_ **—she thinks lustfully to herself. Petra squeezes at the protracted hardness of her nipples.

Levi could make a mean joke. He decides not to. His phone rings. It’s the long eerie sci-fi tone. He slides his fingers out of Petra's mouth and steps out of bed, swiping his phone from the night stand. Hange's old happy face smiles at him.

"Yes." He sits on the edge of his bed, his back towards Petra.

She lies there with all of her stress seeping out of her.

"The tap water is turning the frogs gay..." Hange laughs hysterically into Levi's ear. The last time she'd laughed this hard was the night she'd graduated from college. She'd snorted so much coke, she had violent tremors. 

Petra doesn't listen to the conversation. She simply processes his voice and Hange's electric cackles as sound. Noise in the middle of her brain-fog. Levi's spine is beautiful. His muscles aren't as sharp like when they were teenagers but he still has butt dimples. He looks better than Eld naked. 

Thinking of her youth, she wasn't equipped with the grown woman's understanding of lust. She has the obscene thought of sliding her wet vagina down his back. Her mouth still tastes like his spit. Now that she has this information, knowing that she is capable of being this thirsty, she feels an odd sense of emancipation—that anything is possible.

All this time, she hasn't been making the wrong decisions after all.

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**Notes for the Chapter:**

> LOL.


	14. My higher ground, my rocket love

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The kind of girls Erwin brought home were the exact opposite of Hange. He dated cheerleaders, class presidents, and Christian girls. Levi said that Erwin's type were the kind of girls who will only take it up the ass and make him wait until marriage.

_"That isn't how virginity works."_ Hange hadn't detected her feelings for him yet. Her love for Erwin had always been in her lower abdomen.

_"Church girls give the best head._" Levi was truly oblivious to her feelings as well.

Hange dated a few girls. She ate pussy all through high school, acquired her taste for men in college. Eventually her diet evolved into anyone with a healthy sexual compass and a propensity for romance.

Though Erwin's family loved her like a daughter, she knew that she would never fit inside of his two story house, with their big dog, rows of family portraits over the fireplace, and the cookie cutter neighborhood. All the houses looked the same on Erwin's street. Massive. Sterile. Grass that wasn't naturally grown there but unfurled off the back of a truck.

She tried to imagine herself without her tongue ring, in pink J. Crew and driving a Mercedes. Blonde with fake tits. Going to church, pretending that she never masturbated.

Not even for Erwin could she change. She had these intrusive thoughts about changing but didn't realize she had been terribly in love with him until he dumped his steady law-school girlfriend.

She was Catholic, not Pentecostal. She was saving her virginity but she did like a finger or two in all of her holes.

_"Hange. I need to be saved."_ He had called her. Erwin had a smiling voice. Whenever he spoke, his voice was so light, you almost thought he'd break out into a song.

_"Aren't you saved already?"_ She never let him live down the era in his life when he loved going to bible study.

_"I need to be in the presence of someone who loves me."_ Not once had either of them addressed loving each other. It was always used like a period at the end of a sentence. Their triangular love was just understood. There were no terms of agreement.

_Someone who loves me_, felt and sounded intimately transactional. That's when Hange knew she was in love with him. Her stomach did somersaults. She jumped out of her high, _literally_, straight into her high tops.

They didn't have sex until after they had graduated from college. They'd both gone through a series of on and off again relationships. Levi never communicated his status, but it was safe to assume that he was perpetually single.

And by after, years after college. Erwin had fallen through on an engagement. Hange was considering a mortgage.

"You know what your problem is? You and Levi both have this problem." She handed him a beer while he moped on this old chewed up loveseat she kept outside. Erwin hid how miserable he was very well. When he looked sad, he only looked deep in thought. His brows wrinkled as he frowned tightly.

"What?" He pressed the bottle to his mouth. For the first time, Hange thought he looked hot with his hair all over his head. She knew he was having a bad day because he hadn't ironed his shirt nor pants.

"You're too busy chasing the Type A people. Neither of you are Type A. Especially you. You don't really believe in god but you go to church, you're a youth pastor..." Hange has a lot of venom for anything religious. Sanctuaries reject her existence.

"Hange, I do believe in something." He scratched at the stubble on his face.

"Something. Not fire and brimstone." She tugged at the string on her hoodie. They sat on her porch watching cars speed down the street.

"I just feel like I'm missing something." At the time, she didn't know he meant the will to live. Erwin was mysterious when it came to his sadness. Actually, Hange can't remember him ever being sorrowful. It was like he never allowed his mind to go there.

"You won't find it fucking girls who only went to college for a husband." She was too busy comparing herself to his perfect life to see the emptiness in his face.

"How about you marry me." He was joking but the tone he used was serious.

"I do. I do. I do. Levi can be my maid of honor. If only he answered the phone."

Adulthood is a test against your long term relationships. You spend all your time at work. The body has been programmed to be productive and that's all your life ever amounts to. Being a workhorse. Your free time is spent sleeping.

Hange wonders if the gnawing expectations of society picked away at Erwin's strength.

Because if you think about your existence for too long, you will begin to feel despair.

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**Notes for the Chapter:**

> work work work. thats all i ever do. thank you for reading my trash. sorry for any errors. i will fix them eventually.


	15. My Heart Has Seen Better Days

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Flies settle around the plastic bucket. It's surface is dinged up, dented with black skid marks. Grime collected under the handles. It smells like sweet garbage behind the cash register. Petra blows a fat bubble and the gum pops all over her chin.

_"Did you like it?"_ Levi had asked. Petra had a rule, that if a man has to ask if it was good, then it most definitely wasn't good at all. This was a special case. She returned his question with another one, _"What do you mean?" _

The second time, she came hard. She swam in colors behind her eyelids. Orange, carmine, spotted purples, and electric blues. It was an extended feeling that no man had managed to give her. Actually. Give isn't appropriate. She had been gifted this glorious sensation of magic oozing from her vagina.

_"When I spat in your mouth. Did you really like it?"_ He had an open stare, that only comes after you've had sex twice. There's nothing to hide when you've been inside of another human being. It's why mother's know when their children are lying, dying, or simply in pain.

In between ringing up customers and stocking the shelves of cigarettes, Petra dwelled in the facts of their intimacy.

_"Yes. I liked your spit."_ She remembers saying this and wipes at the beads of sweat pooling at the back of her neck.

_"That's a little disgusting. How much?"_ Levi wasn't teasing her. He pulled his sweatpants up his strong legs.

She didn't know how to answer. With her current _like_, could she compound the intensity of her _past like_ with it? Her_ like _is disfigured.

_"Did it quench your thirst?" _He poked again to eliminate the silence. His face was smooth with nothingness, but not cold.

_"I'm very full."_ Of his semen and his saliva. That was her final answer. Levi half smiled before vanishing into his bathroom. Succumbing to her self imposed shame, she didn't spend the night.

The radio station in the store loops on the same one hundred songs everyday. _So I'm gonna love you like I'm gonna lose you_, hits oddly, in the back of her throat. Petra takes a moment to clear said throat, and catch her breath. The front door opens, the bell tinkles at _'Cause we'll never know when, when we'll run out out of tiiiiiiiime_.

It's Ymir in a baby-blue bucket hat. She doesn't have her goofy smile on her face. When she walks up to the counter, she can't meet Petra's eyes. Or maybe it's the other way around. Petra hasn't showered since last night because she didn't want to wash Levi's juices off her body.

_In the blink of an eye. Just a whisper of smoke. _

"Can I buy a loose cigarette off of you?" Ymir rummages through the pockets of her baggy jeans.

"You can just have one. I go to lunch in fifteen minutes. What's wrong?" Petra leans on the counter, waiting for Ymir to life her head. She stops digging for money she never had, hands stiff in her pockets.

"I hate this fucking song." Ymir chokes on a sob.

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Petra takes Ymir to McDonald's on her lunch break. They sit in the noise of the sizzling deep fryer and electrical beeps of the oven. Their background noise is someone ordering one hundred dollars worth of Big Mac meals over the loud intercom.

Ymir cries into her large fry, having yet to explain to Petra what the fuck had happened. She suspects it has something to do with relationships. At eighteen, you only cry into food like this when someones decides that they don't love you the same way that you love them.

"She shows up at my place, fucks my socks off then tells me we can't see each other anymore." Ymir's knee thumps against Petra's. They're sitting in one of the greasy booths next to the indoor playground. With her knuckles, Ymir wipes the snot from her face, popping a tear soaked fry into her mouth.

"Did she say why?" Petra has an idea. If Historia is of a certain pedigree, Ymir has too many boxes ticked to be palpable enough for the family.

"No. I never found my sock." Ymir hiccups.

Petra wants to say that she'll get over it, but that would come off insensitive.

And she never got over Levi. You repress the want, sink it deep into your nether regions.

"I don't wanna go home. Seeing my bed makes me think about my orgasm. I can't bring myself to wash my sheets." Ymir has the cutest freckles. She looks like swollen baby. This reminds Petra that, technically when it comes to measuring life experiences, Ymir _is_ a baby in comparison.

"My mom used to say you gotta kiss a bunch of frogs before one turns into a prince—well a princess in your case." Petra slurps down her watery cola, bending the straw with her teeth.

"Petra, I came so hard. My vision blurred. I'm corrupted. There will be no after." Ymir starts to cry again.

"There's always an after. Right now is the after." Petra doesn't know how to explain that the after is always worth the wait.

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